Robert Atkyns

Sir Robert Atkyns (1620–1710) was an English Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Member of parliament, and Speaker of the House of Lords. Early life He was the eldest son of Sir Edward Atkyns, one of the Barons of the Exchequer during the Commonwealth, and the elder brother of Sir Edward Atkyns, who preceded him as Lord Chief Baron. There had been lawyers in the family for many generations: "He himself, and his three immediate ancestors, having been of the profession for near two hundred years, and in judicial places; and (through the blessing of Almighty God) have prospered by it." In The History of Gloucestershire written by his son Sir Robert Atkyns the record of the family is carried still further back, in an unbroken legal line, to a Richard Atkyns who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and "followed the profession of the law in Monmouthshire". Robert Atkyns was born in Gloucestershire in 1620. It is not certain whether he went to Oxford or to Cambridge, Alexander Chalmers including him among the famous men of Balliol College, and George Dyer among those of Sidney Sussex College. Chalmers's statement may have originated in the fact that in 1663 Atkyns received from Oxford the degree of master of arts. In 1638 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1645. Mention of his name is made in some reported cases. Parliamentary and judicial career In 1659, he entered Richard Cromwell's parliament as member for Evesham. Probably he was already known to sympathise with the king's party, for he was among the sixty-eight who were made knights of the Bath at Charles's coronation. His name does not appear in the list of members of Charles's first parliament, but in that of 1661, he sat for East Looe, speaking frequently upon legal questions, and, as appears from the record of the debates, with acknowledged authority. In 1661 he was made a bencher of his inn and a King's Serjeant, and about the same time was appointed recorder of Bristol. He served as one of the fire judges after the 1666 great fire of London. On the death of Sir Thomas Tyrrell in 1672 he became a judge of the court of Common Pleas. Along with Sir William Scroggs, he was a judge in some of the trials arising from the Popish Plot, but there is little trace of the part which he took. According to Roger North, who was an eyewitness to the Plot trials, Scroggs entirely dominated the proceedings: the other judges, in his view "were passive and meddled little".